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Kindle Notes & Highlights
You can’t control the events that happen to you, but you can control your interpretation of them. So why not choose the story that serves your life the best?
It turns out that the things I hated most as a child are the same things that serve me the most as an adult.
There’s no need to seek external approval when you already have internal approval.
Acceptance, then, is knowing that when your plan fails, or your road dead ends, it means a bigger plan is at work. And I’d rather be part of a big plan than a small one.
It’s a true act of love to believe in someone and support them wholeheartedly, even though you don’t morally or ethically agree with them.
You rise out of your humble beginning to become part of a community, and it is only together and as equals that we will save the world.
The toughest transition is the transition to understanding that being yourself is all you need to be.
We thought that sex and passion were the same as love and intimacy.
An entertainer makes you laugh, I realized, but an artist makes you understand.
One way to know you’re in a society that’s not equal is when there’s only one slot for a new black person in an ensemble cast, or in any group. It’s a sign that people are more concerned about looking equal than actually being equal.
If you wait for certainty, you will spend your whole life standing still. And if you grow discouraged and give up when things get rough, you’ll miss out on your best possible destiny. So the secret is to be excited about what is in your power to control, be accepting of what’s not in your power to control, and then move with certainty into an uncertain future.
The answer: Pay attention, dummy. Life is pulling you there automatically. You don’t have to know. You don’t have to understand. You just have to trust. There is a flow to life, and all you have to do is make the decision to follow that current—even if it seems to be carrying you away from everyone around you.
Every experience is a potential life lesson. Even if you don’t appreciate it at the time, each struggle in the present is preparing you for something else in the future.
Though people say to live in the moment, each moment leads to other moments. So treat each moment like a seed, and care for it so that something beautiful can grow from it.
It’s always a bad sign when you get upset at your wife for something you wouldn’t get upset at anyone else about.
Communication is the key that unlocks a plan. Everyone should know your intentions at all times, as well as any changes to them. A good idea with bad communication is as useful as a phone with a dead battery.
As Curtis Mayfield once said, “It may not come when you want it to, but when it does, it’s right on time.”
sometimes when advice comes from a person you’re in a relationship with, it sounds more like criticism.
Through talking on stage about subjects I typically avoided thinking about, and receiving the immediate response of laughter—which to me says, I can relate to what you went through—I began to heal wounds I didn’t know I had. It enabled me to accept even my father’s worst behavior and finally go through the grieving process around my mom.
You only learn by doing. Everyone’s inexperienced when they start anything new.
these trips showed me that we are all brothers and sisters—and we need to always remember that. Because if one person is hurting, then we are all hurting.
How you handle rejection is very similar to how you’ll handle success. If you’re strong enough to handle rejection without taking it personally, without holding a grudge, and without losing your passion and drive, then you’ll be strong enough to reap the rewards.
